Human Experiments (1979)

Country music singer Rachel Foster is wrongfully accused for family mass murder.She ends up in a women's prison led by Warden and Dr.Kline.It seems that both of them are conducting bizarre psychological experiments on the inmates where they are mentally broken down and rebuilt with a totally new personality.Wonderfully hokey and very tame exploitation flick with fairly gruesome mass murder aftermath and a bit of graphic nudity.The ending is pretty stupid and there is mildly infamous scene of Linda Haynes covered in insects which probably was the main reason of putting "Human Experiments" on video nasties list.7 country singers out of 10.I must say that I enjoyed this absurd exploitation classick.Am I the only one?

Country singer Rachel Foster (Linda Haynes) is undoubtedly the unluckiest person alive as she stumbles upon a young kid who has just slaughtered his family. She shoots the kid (he goes into a coma), resulting in a life sentence after the crooked Sheriff pins all the murders on her. But this is no ordinary prison as the Warden (Mercedes Shirley) and Dr. Kline (Geoffrey Lewis) are conducting bizarre behavioral experiments on their charges. My Aldo Ray mini-marathon continues with this sleazy exploitation flick. Ray pops up in the first 15 minutes as a lecherous bar owner who tries to get it on with our lead. There are some memorable bits in this and, on a whole, it is a pretty solid WIP entry with a few nice twists. Lewis does a great job as the creepy doctor and their is a nice supporting role from Ellen Travolta. Haynes is an attractive lead and isn't afraid to deliver the genre required nudity. The only odd thing is the filmmakers having her sing to terrible vocals supplied by someone else. The film's oddity highlight though is the Warden booking the band Satan & The Lucifers to perform for her inmates. Director Gregory Goodell excels in the film's last third where Foster's nightmares come to life to haunt her. Sadly, he went on to Lifetime movies exclusively after this.

This movie is most famous for having been banned in Britain during the "video nasty" scare of the early 80's. I can only suppose the idiots mistook it for a Nazi death camp exploitation flick, like the similarly titled "S.S. Experiment Camp", because it's really not all that shocking or offensive. 70's actress Linda Haynes plays a country singer. Haynes was very cute and sexy, but she was a TERRIBLE singer, which might explain why her character only gets booked by horny hicks at honky-tonk bars out in the middle of nowhere. While driving back from one of these gigs, her car breaks down. She goes to a farmhouse to use the phone, only to discover that a pre-teen boy living there has slaughtered his entire family with a shotgun. She shoots the homicidal tyke in self-defense and ends up being blamed for all the murders.The movie for awhile turns into a rural WIP movie like "Jackson County Jail"--there is a "de-lousing" and shower scene, some aborted lesbianism, and a brief cat fight--but not as much as usual in a WIP film (gratefully, perhaps since all the other prisoners are generally unattractive). But this particular prison also has a bent psychiatric doctor played by Geoffrey Lewis (side-kick to Clint Eastwood and the father of Juliette Lewis). He has some crackpot therapy where he breaks the worst offenders down to the level of infants, where they're clutching teddy bears and sucking their thumbs, and then he tries to "rebuild" them as respectable citizens. So far, however, all his "experiments" have gone horribly awry.The scenes of the prison authorities breaking the Hayne's characters will are pretty effective--the crackpot shrink is also a frustrated entomologist, so at one point they pour disgusting insects all over her, and they do other stuff like stage mock executions and try to convince her she's going insane. None of this rises much above the level of a TV movie though, and it hardly justifies this movie's "nasty" status. The image of grown women reduced to infantilism is kind of disturbing, but if this were a Jess Franco or European WIP film, they probably would have tried to make this sexy somehow, which would have been far more disturbing.The ending is REALLY stupid, but I didn't find this movie boring generally speaking. And it certainly didn't deserve the "nasty" treatment it got from the British censors.

The things I sit through in the name of film reviewing so other people may not have to, Damn I'm a real masochist! This obscure piece of crap is a good case in point. It starts out with self employed singer Rachel Foster (Linda Hayes) driving along a desert road in the middle of nowhere, she drives past a sign that says 'Putnam County Elevation 4,250', she pulls up along side a bar and introduces herself to the owner Mat Tibbs (Aldo Ray). The next thing we see is Rachel singing (badly) and performing to a bunch of redneck looking guys in cowboy hats. After this less than thrilling opening, and after she gets ripped off by Tibbs, she's back on the road again. While distracted behind the wheel a girl (Theodora Tate) runs out in front of her car and Rachel hits her. She veers off the road and goes back to try and help her but Rachel can't see the girl as she has been thrown into some shrubbery by the roadside. Rachel notices a house and heads towards it in the hope of finding help. Rachel knocks the door but no one answers and since the door is open anyway she decides to just go in. Inside she discovers three members of the Lewis family, the Father (James O'Connell) his wife (Rebecca Bohanon) and their son (Timothy Coyle) brutally murdered by the fifth member Darell (Robert Porter). She fears for her life and arms herself with a shotgun from a nearby rack and proceeds to check the house. She finds Darell and in self defence shoots him which puts him in a coma from which his doctors say he will never regain consciousness. There goes her alibi. She runs from the house and is arrested by the local Sheriff (Jackie Coogan). In court Rachel doesn't have a leg to stand on and is found guilty of first degree murder. She is sentenced to life in the Gates Correctional Facility. The psychiatrist who works at the prison, Dr. Kline (Geoffery Lewis) takes an interest in Rachel and singles her out for some unusual forms of 'treatment'. Warden Webber (Mercedes Shirley) is a bit uneasy with Dr. Kline's methods but goes along with it and helps him cover any potential problems up from the outside authorities. Will I be able to stay awake to watch this crap to the end? Will Rachel be able to survive Dr. Kline's bizarre therapy? Personally speaking I didn't care in the slightest but someone out there might I suppose, does seem unlikely though. Co-produced and directed by Gregory Goodell I thought this film sucked. It has absolutely nothing to recommend it. It's exploitation elements are virtually non-existent, there's a brief masturbation scene, a very short shower scene and one or two extremely quick glimpses of female nudity but nowhere near enough for this type of film. The film also features a scene where a room fills up with live insects and bugs that crawl all over Rachel, there doesn't seem to be any reason for this but what the hell, to be fair it almost sparked my interest, hey I said almost! Maybe the filmmakers wanted to create a serious study of prison life from the perspective of a wrongly accused woman (Ha! right sure they did!), well if they did they failed miserably in this aspect of the film too. I'm not sure what the script by Richard Rothstein was aiming for, as I've already mentioned it works as neither exploitation or as a more serious thought provoking film. It just sucks all round. The ending doesn't make any sense either. The film appears to be shot in a real prison and for that reason it actually looks OK, acting isn't as bad as it perhaps could have been but it still ain't great. John Travoltas sister Ellen Travolta has a smallish role as an inmate Rachel befriends nicknamed 'Mover' so called because she gets things done, apparently anyway. The music is terrible as well, especially when Rachel 'sings' and there is another awful musical number when a band of talentless hacks perform at the prison to the inmates. I really don't know the type of film watching person who would get anything out of this lame excuse for a film, I certainly didn't. Recommended to insomniacs and masochists only, everyone else steer well clear!